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Sources close to VG247 have revealed that Sony is planning to release the PlayStation 4 before Christmas 2013, which is when Microsoft is expected to launch its next console.

The source stated that Sony is "confident" of beating Microsoft to market this time around. The Xbox 360 was out for almost a full year before Sony released the PlayStation 3.

"Top line publishers" already know about the console's specifications, with the source confirming that "Developers working with publishers – like Ubisoft, for example – already know what's going on. They're already working on it."

Most other developers will be briefed "by the end of this year", though some have been invited to events in May and June in the US.

But if it does, I tip my hat to Sony. The PS3 isn't a failure, but the sooner they leave it behind (assuming they have a better game plan in place for the PS4) the sooner they can't start recovering their marketshare and brand.

Day-one DLC has become common because of the way console games are developed. After the game is finished, it has to go through an approval process from the console makers. That can take a month or two. During that time, the dev team must either sit on their hands, move to another project, or work on DLC. That's why this is happening. It's not insidious, they are just keeping the devs working.

If the DLC is finished before the approval is done, naturally they are gonna put it on the disk.

Wouldn't the process just reset? You're changing the content of the disc.

Speaking of gray areas, people have been talking that if the DLC is on the disc, and you buy what is on the disc, then legally you can access the DLC without paying. However, just like ripping copy-protected movies you own, the process itself to access the DLC is likely illegal.

After more than 250,000 votes, Consumerist readers ultimately decided that the type of greed exhibited by EA, which is supposed to be making the world a more fun place, is worse than Bank of America's avarice, which some would argue is the entire point of operating a bank.

To those who might sneer at something as "non-essential" as a video game company winning the Worst Company In America vote: It's that exact kind of attitude that allows people to ignore the complaints as companies like EA to nickel and dime consumers to death.

I can imagine a situation where the game is in certification for 5 weeks before it comes out. It's actually off our hands. Day one feels different to me than on-disc. On-disc means that at the time of going into certification I've done extra work and decided, you know what? I'm not going to give you that. I'm going to cordon that off and ask you for more money later on. There's a line there.

I'm going to go home and I'm not going to get my $60 worth. Then they're going to charge me more to unlock the thing I should've gotten the first time. That's horseshit. That's actually horseshit. And I firmly believe that.

Former Activision employees and Infinity Ward founders Jason West and Vincent Zampella are taking Activision to court on May 29, after a few years of legal back-and-forth negotiations and counter-suits from Activision. The date was initially set for May 7, but was pushed back at Activision's request.

Filed under "still not fixed": TV episodes still start automatically sans individual episode selection screen, and searching is still done with a string of letters, and not a keyboard interface. Maybe next time?

Someone opined that the reason the new Netflix app was so stripped down and sucky was to make control with kinect easy.

It seems like there should be some sort of Kinect button on the top-right of the screen that switches to a Kinect-friendly mode, but Microsoft seems really intent on forcing their device down everyone's throats. cough

Peter Molyneux: Well, it's not an easy answer. It's a slightly complicated answer. Here I was at Microsoft and Lionhead, and it was very secure and comfortable. There was the Fable franchise, which is a great franchise. There were some wonderful people to work with. And Microsoft's a wonderful company. I was very comfortable.

Then, about 18 months ago, this sequence of strange things started happening. I started getting all these lifetime achievement awards and BAFTA fellowships, and gosh, who knows what else? I almost lined them up on the shelf, looked at them, and thought to myself, well, are these awards really for things I've done in the past? Do they represent the best I'm ever going to do? Or do they represent a challenge to what I am going to do?

I got myself into this slightly obsessive state where I said to myself that I just couldn't accept the best I am ever going to do in my life has already been done. I've got to take the bit between the teeth and go out there and try and do something truly, truly great.

All this stuff came together, and I went to speak to Microsoft a few months ago. They were very understanding about it. And we agreed two things. The case I put was, the best a creative person can ever do is when there is a lot of risk and when there is a lot at stake. That's hard to do within a big corporation like Microsoft. Secondly, the type of people I would need to exploit all this new stuff would be slightly different from the type of people who were at Lionhead.

Conversely then, looking back at your time at Lionhead, what is your deepest regret?

Peter Molyneux: I take this as a personal failure. And it is a personal failure. Not being persuasive enough that Fable 3 needed more time. That's purely and utterly my fault. It's me not being clear enough about it. The subject matter of Fable 3 was really good. Becoming a king was a good centre point for a game. It's a shame we didn't find more time.

Why weren't you afforded more time for Fable 3?

Peter Molyneux: It's probably better if I don't go into the details of that. As a creative director you always have to be clear about why you need time. Any publisher in my experience over the years, they don't want to give you more time. Of course they don't, because it means more money. But they equally don't want you to make a mistake with the product.

It's very difficult for publishers to actually appreciate why more time is needed and what the business case for more time is. That's the responsibility of the director who's in charge of that developer. That's me - to explain that and make that clear.

"When you're making a game, and you're getting into a ship cycle, there's often three or four months where the game is basically done. And you have an idle team that needs to be working on things," Epic's Cliff Bleszinski said to Gamespot

I call bullshit on this. Gears 3 was one of the exceptions because MS allowed them to miss the 2010 Fall deadline, but when they finished in the Spring they decided they'd rather hold off for Fall 2011, giving them time to do further polish and work on DLC.

Also, this is coming from the man that just gave us this:

I mean, look at DICE and BF3. It's obvious those guys were working until the very last second on that game.

Also, the part about idle teams is hilarious. Isn't this the industry where these guys get stuck on 12 hour days for like half a year? Heaven forbid they have downtime before the game releases, at which point you know they'll be stuck playing wack-a-mole with all the bugs that got through thanks to their being overworked.

Oh yea, and working on DLC.

Mr. Bleszinski says digital distribution could solve the issue.

"If we can get to fully downloadable games, then you can just buy a $30 horror game and just have it, and that stuff will thankfully go away."

I've seen current console downloads pricing. This is also a steaming pile.

---

I think the most mind-blowing thing I've heard lately is EA will be releasing the "real" ending to Mass Effect 3 free. Considering that this was unplanned and possibly unnecessary it seems crazy gracious on their part.

The difference between used games and new copies that include free downloadable content will be a bit clearer to many customers at used game giant Gamestop. That's because of a class-action settlement that is forcing the retailer to post warnings about those differences in its California stores and on its website for the next two years.

According to the lawsuit, Gamestop misled many consumers by displaying game packaging that claimed DLC was available for free with purchase, even though used copies required an additional fee of up to $15 for that content. Attorneys at law firm Baron and Budd alleged that Gamestop used this confusion to inflate the prices of used games at their stores, often to levels only $5 less than their new counterparts.

In announcing the settlement, Baron and Budd argued that the victory will help even knowledgeable used game consumers by forcing Gamestop to lower the price on used titles missing downloadable content. The firm even claims that "GameStop lowered prices for used copies of many of the game titles identified in the lawsuit," though we think that just as likely has to do with rapidly declining demand for those games as any legal threat.

Customers in California who purchased select games from Gamestop will be able to receive $15 in Gamestop coupons and checks as part of the settlement. The law firm says it's also busy "investigating similar GameStop practices in other states" and encourages anyone else who has had a problem with Gamestop's used game sales tactics to get in touch.

I wonder what their long-term plan is. There's no way they can stay in business past 2016 or so. With digital distribution looming, they'll have to close up shop or drastically change their business model. There's no way Gamestop exists in its current form much longer.

I think I agree with Dakar. If we take Mass Effect for instance, I'd be okay with giving my in-game team-mates voice commands. Like "Iliana, flank right" or "Garrus, flank left" or "Garrus, snipe left enemy".

But then there's only me and my room-mate at home and I'm in a separate room. And a quarter of the time I'm yelling at the idiot team mate who'is in my way or acting like a lemming, so it wouldn't be much of a difference. Hopefully the word "frack" isn't a commmand, I've started using it from BSG instead of the 4 letter "F" word.

And since I have a Kinect, I definitely have to see how Mass Effect uses it. Damn, I still haven't taken the Kinect out of the box and played Fruit Ninja. Gotta do that...

A job listing discovered by Engadget this week offers more clues as to what that hardware could be, specifically pointing to job skills like "hardware design, prototyping, testing, and production across a wide range of platforms."

Getting more direct, the "electronics engineer" position entails working "with the hardware team to conceive, design, evaluate, and produce new types of input, output, and platform hardware." Wait, platform hardware? That sounds an awful lot like the Steam Box rumors we heard earlier this year (rumors that were later semi-shut down).

Yeah, since PS3 owners were left out of the original Mass Effect, it never quite picked up steam on the system. I'm sure multiple-platform owners who began the series on 360 wanted their saves to carry over, so why play ME2 on PS3, even if it is your preferred system?

I have Mass Effect on 360, and have tried to start it up twice, but I never could get past the 2-hour mark. It just seems like too huge of an investment.

Yeah, since PS3 owners were left out of the original Mass Effect, it never quite picked up steam on the system. I'm sure multiple-platform owners who began the series on 360 wanted their saves to carry over, so why play ME2 on PS3, even if it is your preferred system?

I've come into contact with a lot more PS3/360 owners than 360/PS3 owners. 360-centric owners like you guys seem to be pretty content in owning one device, while almost every friend on my PSN list also owns a 360.

Of course, this is drawn from personal experience, so it's not exactly scientific.

Richard Browne, former Eidos developer and former VP of Core Studios at THQ and Universal Interactive, believes “the real cost” of used games is not to the publisher, but to the consumer as well as the direct cause of the “death of single-player gaming.”

“How do I stop churn? I implement multiplayer and attempt to keep my disc with my consumer playing online against their friends,” he said. “It works wonderfully for Call of Duty – no doubt it can work wonderfully for me. The problem is, at what cost? Countless millions of dollars would be the answer.”

Two things, and feel free to point out the error in my logic:

1. If I keep a game for two weeks, two months, or two years, the publisher still gets the same amount of money from me (DLC excluded).
B. You can buy CoD used and play it online without any extra fees.

To Browne, the true cost of used game sales is the variety in the market is dwindling as games which were successful in the past as a single-player offering, are now being “redesigned out of their element to introduce multiplayer features.”

Variety in the market is dying because everyone is trying to replicate blockbuster games, thinking they can be the next Call of Duty. That has nothing to do with used games. Strange that someone can see so many of the problems but completely whiff on the cause.

1. If I keep a game for two weeks, two months, or two years, the publisher still gets the same amount of money from me (DLC excluded).
B. You can buy CoD used and play it online without any extra fees.

C. Of all the industry Publisher whining, not once has any of them, EVER addressed having a good game as a way to make more money. They seem to think the solution is to just charge more for less.

To Browne, the true cost of used game sales is the variety in the market is dwindling as games which were successful in the past as a single-player offering, are now being “redesigned out of their element to introduce multiplayer features.”

I call BS on that! It was announced way ahead of time that Saint's Row the Third would not have an MP component (SR1 and SR2 had MP). Saint's Row the Third outsold Saint's Row 2 in pre-order.

On November 2, 2011, THQ CEO Brian Farrell announced that Saints Row: The Third was already the most pre-ordered title in series history. In fact, the game had four times the number of pre-orders Saints Row 2 had two weeks before its launch.

Like Excalibur says, people want a good game. With a good amount of content and no bugs.

Reminds of an old story. Sony had just bought a movie studio - would have been Columbia, I think - and the studio head was brought in to present to a number of Japanese executives how he planned to run the studio next year. He started talking about how his planning was 2 great successes, another 5 movies that did well, some 8 movies that just barely made their money back, and about 4 duds that would lose money. When he finished, he opened the floor for questions. There was one.

"Why make the duds?"

The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.

“It’s almost game over at Sony,” said Yoshiaki Sakito, a former Sony executive who has worked for Walt Disney, Bain & Company, Apple and a start-up focused on innovation training. “I don’t see how Sony’s going to bounce back now.”

The pile-on is spreading to mainstream media now. Not a good sign (though as Apple fans we must accept that naysayers love to make their predictions).

The Entertainment and Devices Division was the only loser: revenue is down 16 percent year on year, at $1.62 billion. The group has gone from a $0.21 billion operating profit in third quarter 2011 to a $0.23 billion loss this quarter. Xbox 360 sales have declined sharply, down 48 percent year on year, though it retains its top spot in the US market, with a 42 percent share, and market-leading sales for the last 15 months.

A not so subtle reminder that life sucks for everyone right now, even those on top.

Good article, even if it does feel like it's begging for page views. There's too much insight and too many good points to ignore.

Not a good sign (though as Apple fans we must accept that naysayers love to make their predictions).

Definitely a bad sign, but I'd steer far away from Apple comparisons. Sony has too little in common with Apple.

The company still makes a confusing catalog of gadgets that overlap or even cannibalize one another. It has also continued to let its product lines mushroom: 10 different consumer-level camcorders and almost 30 different TVs, for instance, crowd and confuse consumers.

“Sony makes too many models, and for none of them can they say, ‘This contains our best, most cutting-edge technology,’ ” Mr. Sakito said. “Apple, on the other hand, makes one amazing phone in just two colors and says, ‘This is the best.’ ”

Additionally, they've had no true visionary to guide the company, and Kaz Harai (pardon my pessimism) is definitely not going to be the one. Sony needs a revolutionary string of products, and that's just not coming from a company that seems to be stuck in Japan of 1996.

Perhaps the only thing they have in common with the late-90s Apple is a loyal following that seems to be ready to go down with the ship, but I think that probably only applies to their gaming division, and that good will took a major hit exactly 365 days ago. I listened to Podcast Beyond on the road today, and I was surprised to hear just now irritated the hosts still seemed to be a full year later after the PSN security breach.

Television personality Adam Sessler and TV network G4 are parting ways, with Adam's last episode as host of G4's "X-Play" airing on the network today, Wednesday, April 25. Adam has been hosting the show since it first aired as ZDTV's "Gamespot TV" in July 1998 and he also served as Editor In Chief of games content at G4. His current projects include starring as himself in the Summer 2012 movie "noobz" and consulting with a film production company on theatrical feature adaptations of video games. Adam intends to stay in front of the camera and continue as a key voice within the games industry. He also sings and is available for weddings and bar mitzvahs.

I don't even get G4, but considering he survived 14 years at that mess, I think it's noteworthy. I never could get a good read on Sessler, I think he's kinda dickish. At the very least, I don't think we saw eye-to-eye on games.